Duncan Cameron

Born in Victoria B.C. in 1944, Duncan now lives in Vancouver. Following graduation from the University of Alberta he joined the Department of Finance (Ottawa) in 1966 and was financial advisor to the Canadian Delegation at the United Nations General Assembly in 1967. After working at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), he went on to complete a doctorate from the University of Paris I (Paris-Sorbonne) in 1976. Duncan is an adjunct professor of political science at Simon Fraser University, a director of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy at Concordia University in Montreal, and a research fellow of the Centre for Global Political Economy at SFU. He was a member of the political science department at the University of Ottawa from 1975 until 2004.He is the author, co-author, editor or coeditor of 11 books including Ethics and Economics (with Gregory Baum), The Other Macdonald Report (with Daniel Drache), The Free Trade Papers, The Free Trade Deal, Canada Under Free Trade (with Mel Watkins) and Constitutional Politics (with Miriam Smith).

The Harper Conservatives are prolonging the mandate for Canadian bombing raids targeting Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) forces inside Iraq, and extending it to include bombings in Syria.

Foreign Minister Nicholson has said Conservatives believe Islamic terrorists abroad represent a threat to Canadian security. Citizens are supposed to understand that by fighting ISIL, Canada is protecting itself from terrorist action on Canadian soil.

Outstanding political leaders inspire, motivate, and rally support. Whether it be Churchill in wartime, De Gaulle in exile, or Indira Gandhi campaigning for the eradication of poverty, these leaders stood out because people responded to the calls for action.

It is a law of politics: to make things happen, people have to be mobilized. The political party that succeeds is the one that builds support, and gets people to vote for it.

Don't

Seen on the Internet next to a picture of Conservative Stephen Harper: "From 1939 to 1945 we fought fascists, why should we vote for them?"

The Conservative Party of Canada only pretends to be conservative. rabble.ca parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg recently laid out a series of reasons why they are not part of the Canadian Conservative political family.

The Cons and their leader are not fascists either. In fascism, the economy -- labour and capital -- is subservient to the nationalist state. In Canada, as in most Western societies, the state is subservient to corporate capitalism.

Don't

Robert Putnam thinks the USA can be fixed. His book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, released this week, offers a diagnosis of what has gone wrong in his homeland. He wants Democrats and Republicans alike to respond.

Equality of opportunity is supposed to be there for all, so Americans can rise above the station of their parents. It happened to Putnam and many of his high school classmates in Port Clinton, Ohio. It is not happening today in Ohio, or Michigan, or elsewhere in America.

Don't

In deciding not to oppose the adoption of Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorist Act 2015, the Liberal Party of Canada has committed a serious error of judgment.

The Harper Conservatives have laid before the House of Commons legislation that would authorize the detention of Canadian citizens without evidence of committing a crime, but simply because they were thought possible of committing terrorist acts.

Bill C-51 empowers the government to transform CSIS -- an intelligence-gathering agency -- into a quasi secret police with the power to lock up citizens suspected to have shown support for a cause deemed terrorist by the government.

By now Stephen Harper should be down to the low teens in popularity, in territory last occupied when Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was at 11 per cent, just before he decided to leave politics in 1993.

Yes, 60 per cent of Canadians disapprove of Harper as a leader say EKOS Politics. But an astonishing 50 per cent think the Harper government has the country going in the right direction.

On February 9, following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. President Obama announced he is considering shipping arms to Ukraine. Merkel is on a world diplomatic mission explaining that the Russian role in promoting civil war in Ukraine cannot be ended by military means.

A joint press conference revealed that the U.S. still thought it could increase the pressure on Russia by supplying arms to Ukraine, while Merkel wants more efforts to be made to engage diplomatically with Russia.

Premiers gathered in Ottawa last week to talk about pressing needs for Canadian infrastructure investment. As the Council of the Federation meeting, chaired by PEI Premier Robert Ghiz, began to address the infrastructure deficit, Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver emailed a media statement: ".. some premiers appear oblivious to the consequences of the current global instability and the dramatic decline in the price of oil."

Don't

The victory in the Greek elections Sunday of the anti-capitalist Syriza (coalition of the radical left) led by Alexis Tsipras is being celebrated by Europeans rejecting policies that have produced over 11 per cent unemployment across the Eurozone.

The new direction for economic policy that Syriza is calling for will be opposed by the powers-that-be that imposed austerity across Europe: the so-called Troika: the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt; the European Commission in Brussels; and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C.